A distribution company with 34 employees posted for a marketing manager and received 190 applications. The owner spent two weekends reading them, interviewed six people, hired one, and she left after five months. He described the experience as a waste of an entire year.
The ad was the problem, and it was the problem before the first application arrived. It asked for one person to do six jobs, and the people who apply for that ad are the ones who are comfortable claiming they can do six jobs.
Why marketing manager attracts the wrong people
Marketing manager means something different at every company that uses it.
At a large firm it means a person who runs a budget and a team. At a startup it means the person who does everything. At a distributor it might mean the person who orders branded jackets and updates the trade show booth. Candidates know this, so the title tells them nothing about your job, and they apply based on a guess.
You get two groups. Experienced marketing managers from large companies who want the budget and the team you do not have, and junior people who see manager in the title and apply hopefully. The person who would genuinely suit a 34 person distributor is looking at other ads, because yours does not describe anything they recognise.
Use a title that describes the actual work. Marketing coordinator, demand generation specialist, content and communications lead, marketing operations specialist. Each one filters differently, and filtering is the whole job of the title.
The unicorn job posting problem
Here is the requirements list I see constantly. Develop and execute the marketing strategy. Manage Google and LinkedIn ad campaigns. Write blog posts, case studies, and email campaigns. Design graphics and sales collateral. Manage the website. Run trade show logistics. Report on performance. Three to five years of experience. $65,000 to $75,000.
That is four jobs. The strategist, the ads buyer, the writer, and the designer are four different people with four different skill sets and four different salary bands, and almost nobody is good at more than two.
What that ad produces is predictable. Strong candidates read it, recognise it as a company that does not know what it wants, and skip it. The people who apply and interview well are the ones who are confident about everything, which is a different quality from being good at anything. Then you hire one, and six weeks in you find out which two of the six things they can actually do. Usually it is the two you needed least.
Pick two, maybe three, closely related skills. Buy the rest as contract work, which is cheaper than a bad hire and easier to change. Someone who writes well and can run an email programme is a real person you can find. Someone who does that plus paid advertising plus graphic design at $70,000 is not.
Do you need a doer or a thinker?
This is the decision the whole ad depends on, and most owners skip it because they want both.
You need a doer if you already know what to do. You know your customer, you know your message, you know which two or three channels work, and the problem is that nothing gets done because you are busy running the company. A coordinator who executes reliably, at $55,000 to $70,000 in this market, will change your year. They need someone to set direction, and that someone is you or an outside adviser.
You need a thinker if you do not know what to do. Enquiries are inconsistent, you cannot say clearly who your best customer is, and previous marketing efforts produced nothing you could measure. A doer in this situation produces activity that goes nowhere, because nobody told them where.
Here is the hard part. A genuine marketing thinker at a level that helps a 34 person company costs $120,000 or more, and many of them do not want to be a one person department. Hiring a $70,000 person and hoping they will grow into the strategy role rarely works, because strategy is learned from doing it under someone experienced, and there is nobody at your company to learn it from.
The common answer is to buy the thinking part-time and hire the doing full-time. That is what part-time marketing leadership is for, and it is worth comparing honestly against the order in which you make marketing hires before you post anything.
What goes in the ad
Six sections, short, in the language a candidate would use about their own work.
What the company does, in two sentences a stranger understands. Not your mission statement. What you sell and to whom.
Why this role exists now. The specific business reason. "We get enquiries from our website and nobody follows up for three days" tells a good candidate more than a page of responsibilities, and it attracts people who like solving that problem.
What they will do in the first 90 days. Three or four concrete things. This forces you to know what you want, and a candidate reading it can tell whether they would enjoy it.
What you will measure. Say it plainly. Qualified enquiries per month, response time on new leads, whatever it is. Candidates who avoid accountability will self-select out, and the good ones find this reassuring.
Who they report to and who else does marketing. If the answer is nobody else, say so. Some people want that and some would be miserable in it. Finding out now costs nothing.
The salary range and how the work happens. Days in office, remote arrangement, travel. Be specific.
What to leave out
Leave out the phrase wear many hats, which candidates read as a warning that the role is undefined. Leave out fast-paced environment, which reads as understaffed. Leave out rockstar and ninja, which will cost you every applicant over 30.
Leave out the long list of required software. Someone who has used one email platform will learn yours in a week, and naming five tools screens out good people for no reason.
Leave out the degree requirement unless it genuinely matters. Some of the most capable marketing people I have worked with came in from sales, journalism, or operations.
And leave out any responsibility you do not intend to fund. If the ad says manage the advertising budget and there is no budget, the person finds out in week two and starts looking in month three.
Posting a salary range in British Columbia
Since November 2023, British Columbia's Pay Transparency Act requires employers to include the expected pay or pay range in publicly advertised job postings. The government's guidance is specific about the format: state a fixed amount, such as $65,000 per year, or a range with both ends, such as $60,000 to $75,000 per year. Open-ended wording like up to $75,000 or $60,000 and up does not meet the requirement. The rule applies to jobs advertised elsewhere as well, if the position is open to someone living in British Columbia. You do not have to disclose bonuses or benefits in the posting.
Owners resist this, usually worrying about what existing staff will think. In practice the range does useful work for you. It removes the awkward salary conversation from the first interview, and it stops you spending an hour with someone who wanted $95,000 when your ceiling is $72,000.
Keep the range honest and narrow. A range of $55,000 to $95,000 tells candidates you have not decided what the job is, and the good ones read that correctly.
How to screen without wasting three weekends
Two changes save most of the time.
First, ask one question in the application form that requires a real answer. Something like: "Look at our website and tell us one thing you would change about how we explain what we do, and why." Three or four sentences is enough. Most applicants will skip the question entirely, which sorts your pile in about twenty minutes. The answers that arrive tell you how the person thinks, which no CV does.
Second, give your final two or three candidates a paid work sample. Thirty to forty five minutes of real work, paid at a fair rate: rewrite a service page, outline an email sequence for a real scenario, critique a recent campaign. Pay for it, because unpaid work tests who can afford to do free work rather than who is good.
A work sample tells you more than a second interview. Interviewing selects for people who interview well, and marketing people are professionally trained to present things persuasively.
The takeaway
Decide first whether you need someone to execute a plan you already have or someone to make the plan. That answer sets the title, the salary, and the screening. Most 10 to 50 person companies need a doer, and they need the thinking from somewhere else.
Then write an ad that names two or three related skills, states why the role exists now, lists what the first 90 days look like, and carries a narrow honest salary range as British Columbia requires. Buy the rest as contract work.
Screen with one written question and one paid work sample. A candidate who can tell you what is wrong with your website in four sentences is worth more than the one with the best-formatted CV in the pile.